


Constellations

by WahlBuilder



Category: The Technomancer (Video Game)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21844924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Dandolo shows Melvin an unusual sandsail and talks about his past.
Relationships: Dandolo | Merchant Prince/Melvin Mancer
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Constellations

This dock is mostly empty — there is a system to which docks are used at what time and by which caravans, but Melvin hasn’t figured it out yet. He will, though, with time.

There is one vessel, however, standing by a far wall, and it is a remarkable vessel at that. Sandsails are impressively huge when fully rigged and loaded, with ‘sails opened like the dancing sand fans, the _Ocio_ looking onto the plains without fear, unblinking, turned right to the sun and soaking in its deadly light.

But this vessel is _enormous_ , heavy, the gondola itself broad and squat and looking much sturdier than anything Melvin has ever seen, and yet as sleek and elegant as all Noctian things are. A work of art. The gondola has strange segmented ribs hugging it some distance behind and in front of the pilot’s cab. The two outriggers, symmetrically-placed, are heavy and broad, too. Melvin is no expert, but by his estimation the outriggers alone can carry as much load as two regular sandsails. But they are not just for cargo: there are tubes fastened to the outer sides of the outriggers, with huge — bigger than Melvin’s palm — and sharp points of harpoons peeking from within.

Dandolo is seated sideways — or rather, leaning on one of the outriggers, looking at the inside of the cab, and his broad back obscures the cab from Melvin’s view.

“A beauty, isn’t he?” Dandolo says without turning to him.

Melvin isn’t surprised anymore that Dandolo feels his presence, but he can’t get used to being... seen. Noticed.

“It... he is unusual,” he notes. Then frowns at himself. “At least, to my untrained eye.”

“Oh, he is, you are right.” Dandolo turns to him, runs a hand over the outrigger hull. It is dusted, uncolored. “His name is _Atarau_.”

Melvin tries it in his head. “Moonlight?”

Dandolo smiles. “Yes. A rather strange thing, considering that we don’t have moonlight, isn’t it? But my mother was...” The smile becomes distant. Dandolo shakes his head.

Melvin tries not to linger on the way light glints on the beads on his braids. There has been more of these beads lately. They don’t scream for attention, but they are beautiful, catching light now and then. Especially the aventurine glass.

Melvin wonders whether it’s for him — but no, it can’t be. It can’t be.

“ _Atarau_ was my mother’s sandsail. One of the biggest the city has. Not suitable for every task, but honed for many tasks others cannot perform. Ah, ‘my mother’s’ — as in, my mother piloted him. An outlandish pilot for an outlandish ‘sail. It is suitable, perhaps, that a man as big as I was born in such a big sandsail.”

“Right in it?”

Dandolo chuckles — a low, soft sound, like a tenderly-made tunic. “Right in it, on a night full of stars, right before the storm came. The caravan had been rushing to return to the city when contractions started. The caravan stopped for the night, and under the salt of stars, I was born, and given a Noctian name, a generous name. And the first time I slept was through the storm: the caravan raced — a few hours after my birth — just before the storm front, but got caught in it for a few hours — it was not so severe that they couldn’t have continued. They reached the city with a new member, sleeping soundly as though winds and sands weren’t howling around.” Dandolo falls silent, but it seems the thought of it is pleasant to him — or maybe some part of him remembers it and still associates storms with comfort.

Melvin likes talking with Dandolo — he’s never talked with anyone this much, it feels like. And he likes listening to Dandolo: the pride and love that pours out of Dandolo when he speaks about the city, or sometimes, anger at indignities and crimes committed here, against the people and the city. But there are gaps of silence, tight and tense, and the tightest of them is the years — decades — Dandolo spent as a slave.

“He came,” Dandolo says quietly, “to the city by foot, already knowing he was with a child. Such a journey should have been impossible, but here he was. Exhausted and hungry and parched, injured in ways that spoke of long and perilous travel — but alive. He never told anyone anything about where he came from or why he left that place, or who...” Dandolo pauses, right hand closing into a fist briefly. “Old Noctians half-jokingly say that such children are of the Black-Handed one. So maybe it is fitting also that I am a sandsinger.”

And Melvin wonders. Dandolo speaks many languages — Melvin has attempted to count, but lost it at eight. And many of them are spoken with fluidity that comes from growing through them, and of course Noctis speaks dozens of languages, but...

And Dandolo’s sandsinging. A gift for a traveller who has to abandon railways and Shadow Paths. A sense of direction, a sense of the surroundings, of the weather, quakes, of presence of living beings... A dash of technomantic blood, perhaps — after all, such particular mutations are not exclusive to the bloodlines registered by Abundance. Aurora has no problem with numbers, and technomancers, though nearly deified, mingle with other people as they wish. And technomancers are scattered all across Mars, some undiscovered, others rogue.

What if it’s not just a dash of blood?..

And it’s impossible that Dandolo hadn’t thought of it himself.

“I was nine seasons when…” A sadness darkens Dandolo’s face, sets it into a mask — and then it’s gone as he strokes the outrigger. “He sang. Noctian songs — he learned them fast. But other songs also. It was so strange to me, so arduous, to force myself to speak just one language for several minutes. Most of the things of him that I remember are connected to this vessel.” Dandolo looks at him, a smile appearing with a delay, as though he has forgotten for a few moments that Melvin is here. “Would you please put out the lights? I’d like to show you something.”

Melvin’s heart is beating heavy in his chest. He likes speaking with Dandolo, likes Dandolo telling stories about the city and the people — and he likes Dandolo _showing_ him the city.

All the rumors about Noctis always inspired in him a certain hunger. He didn’t even want to ask merchants themselves about it — he didn’t want to force them to lie, but he also didn’t want that hunger to be sated, not exactly. Noctis was something he couldn’t grasp, would never even touch — and it was good that way. A dream he could hold onto, something entirely different from all the lives he had to lead, as a living weapon, as an army officer... As a brother, a son, an uncle. Those were heavy things — but Noctis was airy. To feel certain that he wasn’t worthy of that beautiful, airy, free thing allowed him to forget, just for a few moments, that he didn’t deserve many things that _were_ within his grasp, that he _could_ get, or even had.

He tries to remind himself that Noctis isn’t an airy thing. He sees himself slipping into a mode of a guest, a dreamer who is lured by the strangeness, _otherness_ of Noctis — instead of the natural reasons for why things are like this or like that, instead of the very tangible people and their real problems. So his hunger is more earthy now, grounded — and Dandolo satiates it. Grounds Melvin with his stories and histories, introductions, dishes, small gifts.

Melvin is strange — but Noctis likes strangers and strange people, so that’s okay. He feels at home here.

He locates switches on the wall and flips them off. The darkness is almost absolute: this dock is a cave deep in the rock, and besides the darkness there is a very tangible sensation of being underground. It is very different from being in a dome or even in the lower parts of the Ophirian Slums.

Thankfully, the path to the sandsail is clean, but still Melvin reaches to Dandolo with his field...

A chuckle sounds a little to the left of what he expected. “Sparkly fingers _and_ presence.”

He smiles, even though Dandolo won’t see it. The sound of Dandolo’s voice envelops him like a warm cloak. He stops when his knees touch the hard tube of the harpoons. “Dandolo?”

“Reach up and take my hand.”

The spark doesn’t pass between as they touch, due to Melvin’s field already having touched Dandolo, — but Melvin feels as though it does. He doesn’t often wear the gloves now, they make it almost impossible to hold a pen or a pencil. Dandolo’s hand is warm and broad and calloused. Melvin brushes the soft fabric of the cuff and nearly retreats his hand.

The dock is cavernous — but suddenly it feels too small.

Melvin follows when Dandolo pulls.

“Careful with your head. And there is a rise...”

He steps into the cab. The sandsail wobbles a little. It’s not a rover that would budge only from an explosion.

The inside smells of wood and metal and mole grease, and something sweet and yet zesty, like pomegranate. He fits right away into a seat and is surprised to find that he doesn’t have to adjust, to try to figure out where to put his long legs or how to situate his bulk. The seat is long, has a high back with a slight inclination, and his feet slot right into broad grooves on the floor.

He is also very aware of Dandolo just a few breaths to his left.

He wants to put his head on Dandolo’s shoulder and sit here in the darkness as the world moves around them — but he brushes that desire away.

“Look, Melvin,” Dandolo says — and sings. It’s too short for Melvin’s liking, just three tones in Dandolo’s velvet voice — little more than a soft hum.

But then he sees. If not for the darkness, he probably wouldn’t have noticed it at first.

A soft glow — the striking deep azure and rich purple that Melvin would never be able to catch in drawing — surrounds them. It comes all over the interior of the cab: in front of them, above, even below. Melvin keeps his breath and worries that one wrong move — his boots too heavy — would scrape it away.

It is a delicate work of geometric patterns, asymmetric in their general arrangement, and as it glows brighter — though not approaching even half of brightness of a standard glow tube Melvin is used to carrying on his uniform — he recognizes patterns seen in the Palace and in the city in general, on mats and glasswork, on walls of houses and on the magnificent gates. There are other patterns, too, familiar somehow even though he can’t figure out their origin.

He leans back, breathing out slowly. “What is it?” he asks quietly. His fingers ache from the need to take Dandolo’s hand. “Paint? Sound-reactive paint?”

Dandolo chuckles. “Close. It’s lichen. And it, indeed, reacts to sound.”

Melvin can see now that the lines are slightly fuzzy. He shakes his head, overfilled with wonder, and looks at Dandolo. He can almost see him, his sharp profile, and the glow reflected in his eyes.

“Your mother took sandsail decoration to a new level, Dandolo.”

Dandolo looks down. The low light outlines his cheekbones and the grooved chin. “He made a venture to the south. This lichen grows in caves there. He cultivated it carefully and carved the interior and fit bits of soaked paper to promote growth. I remember sitting here as he sang quietly those three tones, over and over, during a night full of winds while we were out in the plains, and these lines pulsed with light like new arrangements of constellations, and I...” He sucks in a sharp breath and falls quiet, and Melvin’s heart cracks, weeping.

He finds Dandolo’s palm, flat on his thigh, and covers it with his, rubs his thumbpad over a callous on the index finger. “He would have rejoiced,” Melvin says quietly, though it’s hard to talk through the tightening in his throat, “looking at you and what you have accomplished.”

“It will never be enough,” Dandolo says. His hand twitches, and Melvin nearly removes his — when Dandolo’s fingers curl, stopping him. “Noctis lives and breathes and changes, so there is always work. Alliances to be made, pieces of my heart to sacrifice... I’m just one person.”

Melvin knows this terrible abyss of inadequacy, of feeling like you are not trying hard enough, not doing your best, not pushing yourself enough for _them_. And you know it will never _be_ enough, because they are many and the world is too big, and you are one.

But not _alone_. Melvin was alone, before, and thought he could shoulder it that way — even though he knew it was a lie: that, even isolating himself and isolated, he could push himself just a bit farther, offer just one more chunk of himself — and things would change. Even though he knew they would never.

But Dandolo knows one person can do only so much — and he relies on others. It takes a whole caravan to bring things to their destination.

“You are not alone,” Melvin reminds him. He wants Dandolo to know that he is here, too. Even though they can’t...

Dandolo looks at him. “Forgive me this melancholy. I wanted to show you _Atarau_ , not embark on a journey of self-pity.”

Melvin squeezes Dandolo’s hand. “I like it when you take me on journeys.”

He leans to Dandolo, hesitates — then Dandolo lowers his shoulder, and Melvin puts his head on it. Dandolo hums the three tones, and Melvin watches lights fall into constellations.

**Author's Note:**

> =*


End file.
